You Need Objections in Your Small Business

By Sarah Petty

If you aren’t getting objections when selling to your clients, you are done selling.

You have either closed the sale or the client wants to leave without placing an order. Many times, you need to work on getting the real objection from the client but if they are not buying, there is a reason. If you don’t find out what the reason is, you can’t sell through it.

An important thing to know when it comes to handling objections is that there are a few times to overcome them – before they happen, right when they happen, after they happen and never.

My favorite way to overcome objections and close every sale possible is to handle objections BEFORE they even happen. Let’s face it; if you have been in business for any length of time at all, you should know what your top 3-5 objections are.

If you are a boutique business, you spend more time with your clients, you have more unique products, services and experiences and because of that, you probably charge more (or you should). Even your marketing pieces stand out. Because of this, price objections might be something you might anticipate.

If you bring price up in the very first conversation by first explaining what makes you different and then creating value for what you do, you will likely have few if no price objections later.

I keep a notebook with me and record any objections and then I spend time figuring out how I can overcome this with the client so that the next time I encounter that objection, I am prepared. Rarely do I hear an objection that I haven’t heard before. For those of you who have a fear of selling, if you go over all of the possible concerns your clients might have in the very beginning, you will be amazed at how excited they are and ready to buy when you get to the sales presentation.

Sarah is a New York Times best-selling author, highly-acclaimed speaker, author, MBA and coach who started her own boutique photography studio after working for Coca Cola for 20 years and then meeting the marketing goals of a top regional advertising agency’s clients. She attributes the rapid growth of her boutique photography studio, which was named one of the most profitable in the country within just five years in business by PPA, to the creation of her own strong brand. Click on Sarah's photograph to visit her blog.

This is very thought provoking and while my sales are primarily over the internet it’s a good thing to work out myself or ask people about. Usually we’re afraid to too timid to know but I can see the wisdom in what you’re saying!

You bring up a great point about overcoming objections. I think keeping a notebook with all objections that you have heard is a great way to organize your thoughts and work out how to move forward with closing that sale. Well done!

There are some very valid points here. It is always important to build a relationship with a customer before you can sell something. The notion of price objection is important and should always be considered.

Good article. I’ve had to deal with customers making the some objections over and over but I should be considering how I can deal with them better. Hopefully in the future I can act ahead to deal with these issues before they happen.

This is very true, after a while you rarely hear an objection you have never heard before. Knowing what the objection is going to be before the client voices it and cutting them off at the pass is a great way to close a sale.

Great ideas! I definitely agree that the strongest arguments expose their own counter arguments and disprove them instead of letting them fester in customer’s minds. If you bring objections to light, it makes you seem a lot more confident in your product’s quality which in turn makes the customer more willing to buy.

The art of selling can be a very tricky thing to master but this article does a good job at explaining some of the basics. I really like the tip about keeping a notebook so you can take notes to help you in future sales. The best way to prepare for the future is to learn from the past. Notes about both the positives and negatives from your last pitch will be useful to refining your pitch.

Makes sense. If a person isn’t interested they’d be more persistent in not talking to you. Selling takes time and practice. Best to figure out what you’re doing wrong and figure out what you can do better next time.

I think too many people view and objection as a negative thing. It’s easy to forget that any business deal is a negotiation. I think an excellent point is raised in the article that if you’re not hearing any objections, it’s because the client has already made up his or her mind.

This is really just great advice. Sure, a lot of these tactics come from experience, or even just natural conversational instincts, but the article did a good job of helping out new sellers. Good read that helped me understand the art of selling.

This article was very helpful and this is great advice. It’s important to be aware of possible objections so that you can have an eloquent response ready. As a customer, there’s nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than a salesperson tumbling over words as if they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I don’t think you should try to answer objections before they are given because some customers will never give the objections, even if they are popular ones. You may put an objection in their head that they aren’t even thinking yet. However, I do think that keeping a notebook is a good idea so that you can be prepared to answer people’s questions in the future if the same objection happens to come up again.

Definitely an interesting read. I’d never given much thought to the fact that most businesses will likely have a short list of issues that might prevent a sale, and these same issues will be repeated over and over through many customers. If you continue to have sales despite this, it seems almost more a perception issue than a genuine problem, and perhaps something can be done to alter those perceptions before the customer even raises their objection, rather than “selling through” their concerns every single time.